


All the Times He Didn't and Then He Did

by NeuroWriter14



Series: It Takes Two [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Do not repost, M/M, Mostly it's different dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24654760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeuroWriter14/pseuds/NeuroWriter14
Summary: A series of times when things could have been different, and then they were.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: It Takes Two [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1786294
Kudos: 53





	All the Times He Didn't and Then He Did

Will had always had a million trains of thought going throughout the day. To have quiet in his head was not a luxury he received or could afford. Quiet meant the dark and the dark was terrifying. But there was no reprieve in a full mind either. The calmest the tempest of his thoughts were was when he found himself trading verbal circles with his psychiatrist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. At first, it was terrifying to have someone rattling around in his mind, and then it became comforting, when that person was Hannibal. But then that comfort began to grow and other feelings along with it. He blamed Hannibal. He blamed the Minnesota Shrike. He blamed the copycat. He blamed the organ harvester. He blamed himself. He blamed the way Hannibal's exposed forearms as he saved someone else had caused more than his heart to jump. He blamed the way he couldn't help but let out a childish giggle when Hannibal stated his mind could connect with others. 

He blamed. He blamed. He blamed.

The snow fell heavily in front of him making the road seem infinite and yet short. The light of his headlights reflected off them making it seem like a thousand insects were flying at the windshield, trying to reach him. His hands gripped the steering wheel, first making them hot and then turning his knuckles white. He should have better control over his thoughts than this. He should have better control over his actions than this. He wasn't even driving in a specific direction, at least not consciously. Not until he pulled up in front of a familiar house and decided to turn off the car. He could see the lights on inside as he trudged up the steps and to the front door. 

_You could still turn back._ He thought to himself as he reached for the doorbell. He couldn't hear anything on the other side of the door, would Hannibal be angry he was here?

His finger hovered in the air for a moment before he pressed, hearing the ringing echo in the house. He was being presumptuous and perhaps even rude as his hand fell to the door handle and found it open. Without thinking he opened the door and stepped through, taking off his jacket as he heard the distinct sound of footsteps.

"Will," Hannibal greeted his voice thick with mild surprise.

"I kissed Alana Bloom," He muttered as he pushed past the other.

"Please come in," Hannibal was mildly annoyed, he could tell, but it didn't seem to matter. 

He walked into the dining room only to find two sets of plates with food half-eaten on the table. His heart sank.

"You have company?" He asked as the other moved past him.

"A colleague."

"He didn't finish his meal."

"He was called out on urge business. Which is lucky for you will," Hannibal's eyes found his. "I have dessert for two."

Will's heart thundered as he followed into the kitchen and watched as Hannibal began to move around in ease.

"What did Alana say when you kissed her?" 

"She said we wouldn't be good for each other."

Will could barely hear Hannibal's answer as the other looked upward once again, their eyes meeting. Normally he hated eye contact, he had told Hannibal as much. But for some strange reason, he found eye contact with Hannibal reassuring. It was like he was flailing wildly in the ocean and Hannibal was his rope to shore. 

"Why did you kiss her?" 

"I've wanted to kiss her since I first met her. She's very kissable." Will's anxiety was hiking in his throat. Why had he come here? Why was he doing this?

"Why kiss her now? You've known her for years and only now kissed her. It suggests a reason."

Will wished he could rip out the part of him that cared so much. 

"I had a few reasons." He could feel Hannibal's eyes as he waited for more. He explained about the animal he thought he heard in the chimney, how he had tried to free it, and how there was really no animal at all. 

"You said you had a few reasons," Hannibal answered, "But you only told me one."

Will debated his next words carefully his eyes searching the food placed in front of him as though it might contain some answer. 

"Something else on your mind, Will? Something you feel as though you can't share so you hide it behind stolen kisses and silence?"

Will swallowed thickly. "Yes."

He could feel the weight of Hannibal's gaze on him, waiting for him to answer he was unwilling to see for himself. It appeared as though the other could sense this. The moment passed and the subject changed.

* * *

It terrified him that his heart jumped more from his chest at the thought of Hannibal dying than facing his own imminent death. He rode next to Jack as they made their way toward Hannibal's office. The office itself was a mess, a strange sight to take in. He was used to the order that Hannibal portrayed around him and in himself. He walked slowly into the room, afraid of what he might find. His own brush with death was nothing compared to the strangeness of thinking of Hannibal dead. 

But he wasn't, though he was bloody. Will ignored Jack who walked in before him. He ignored the people milling around the scene, taking pictures and bodies. He ignored the fallen decorations and the black stag on the floor. He ignored everything as Hannibal's rather pleased looking gaze seemed to pull him closer. 

"I was afraid you were dead."

Was his heart still beating?

Will leaned on the desk, attempting to catch the other's eyes and then thinking better of it. They traded words, as they always did, talking in circles around one another yet somehow understanding exactly what the other meant. 

Hannibal smiled at him, the heat of his smile reaching into the depths of his eyes and setting Will on fire with it.

* * *

He was going insane. Losing time, losing focus on reality. Some part of him should have read deeper into the fact that when he first noted losing time, he found himself outside Hannibal's office. Some part of him should have read deeper into the fact that the only person he confided in was Hannibal. Most would say that's usual, therapist, psychiatrist, counselors, and psychologist were meant to be confided in but Will always had problems confiding in therapists. He'd had numerous counselors as a child and then teenager. There had been a few therapists as an adult first when he went into law enforcement and then again when he tried to enter the FBI. But he was labeled unstable and suddenly found himself in a classroom, talking at the newest FBI trainees.

"I know what kind of crazy I am. I am not that kind of crazy."

Hannibal was moving closer to him. He started rattling off various causes for what he was experiencing, noticing more and more the nearness of the other's body. He sucked in a breath, feeling himself stretch along the latter. He couldn't keep his eyes still. He looked everywhere around Hannibal before finding his face again and more specifically his lips and again force himself to look away.

He couldn't have feelings for his psychiatrist. He just couldn't. As easy as it was for him to step into the minds of others, it was rare that he could feel for others. He could step into their thinking, see things through their eyes, but the emotions were never his. These emotions, however, were entirely his own and he pushed them down, tried to refocus them. He told himself he actually felt for Alana, or maybe he could find someone else. Maybe he could bury himself further into something that wasn't Hannibal Lecter. Maybe he could do a million things that would refocus him away from Hannibal.

* * *

Will paced in his cell. His heart thundered with a million emotions after he stood on one side of the bars and Hannibal the other. He _saw_ him now. He knew who Hannibal was. He knew the darkness within him, the other had gifted something from that darkness once. 

How could he have been so blind? He knew better than anyone how to step into the shoes of a killer, to see through their eyes as if they were his own and he couldn't see the killer under his nose. The killer who wormed his way to a place he shouldn't be. As his mind returned, he found a reason for why Hannibal would have done any of what he did. Framing him, giving him gifts in the form of mutilated bodies. Nights and days went on, his trial came close, and eventually, he found himself wanting Hannibal dead. 

It was because Hannibal wanted to pull something from him, the darkness of Will's own heart that he tried desperately to repress. It wasn't exactly like Hannibal's, Will knew this, but it was there and the other was curious about it.

The cell door eventually opened, leaving him with his freedom once again. Opportunity soon followed it, to make the other suffer as he did. But once he found himself in Hannibal's presence once again, unencumbered by bars and third party listeners, his emotions wavered once more.

He wanted revenge, he wanted justice for himself and others wronged by Hannibal's caged beast. He wanted-

He wanted Hannibal. He could see him sitting across from him, his eyes following him, his ears straining to listen to the whispered words they traded. 

His mind betrayed him as there were moments in which he saw himself crossing the space between him and taking Hannibal for himself. What he did varied. Sometimes it was murder, sometimes it was sex. 

He thought once Hannibal had something about the connection between murder and sex, but that was also locked away with a darkness he didn't want. 

He laid his trap carefully, but who that trap was going to spring for shifted in his mind. Some days it was Hannibal, some days it was Jack.

The emotions he tried too hard to bury stayed under the surface, like a wound that turned to a scab that turned to scar. It faded, but it was still there if he knew where to look for it. And he knew where to look.

He had a choice, he knew this. Hannibal or Jack. The darkness or the solitude. The life he wanted to live and the life he should live. 

It was agonizing. 

And then that choice was gone, cut away by the tip of a sharp blade.

He should have died. His time in the world should have been done, but Hannibal preferred him alive.

When his eyes finally flew open in the hospital after all that had happened, his first thought betrayed him. He should have thought about Abigail or Jack or Alana. The people wounded and killed as Hannibal left. 

But instead, his thought terrified him.

_Hannibal._

* * *

He sailed an ocean for him, crossed countries, and found a broken heart. He wished he had found Hannibal that day in the catacombs. Things would have been different if they had found each other in the maze of candles and dead bodies. They could have left together, they could have done anything. He had forgiven him and he meant it.

Until he found himself at Lecter Castle and saw what Hannibal had left behind. Maybe he could have continued to mean his forgiveness if he had found him right after that. If the black stag metaphor he followed led him to the physical person. Instead, he found Jack, and then Bedelia and his forgiveness crumbled.

"You dropped your forgiveness," Hannibal said. "You forgive like God forgives. Would you have done it quickly? Or would you have stopped to gloat?"

"Does God gloat?" Will asked. He was done for. He knew it. He could feel the danger creeping up his spine.

"Often."

* * *

He should be embarrassed to wake up and find himself in different clothes. Though it had happened quite often over the last two days. First Hannibal had changed his clothes in Florence, readying him to saw his brain from his skull. Then Mason Verger had his clothes changed once again. And now he was in a third set. Hannibal had saved him, clothed him, and watched over him while he slept. 

It should have been sweet. To wake up and find Hannibal worrying over him. But it only tore at his already broken heart more.

He tried to mend his heart by burying it. First in solitude and then with a family. Ready-made and perfect. But he ached in private until privacy became unbearable and the darkness swarmed in his gut. 

And then there was Hannibal, before him once again.

And he wanted him.

* * *

He couldn't explain what he saw out of the corner of his eye. The strange glint in the distance. His head rested on Hannibal's chest, feeling his heart pump in every inch of his body. But mostly he felt Hannibal, pressed against him, grasping him. They were two halves of a whole. Conjoined he once called them. And here they were once again, wrapped around each other like ivy vines, or maybe rose stems. They were buried into each other and any attempt to separate them would rip them apart. It was as terrifying as it was beautiful. The emotions he had suppressed, the feelings he had kept to himself were suddenly out in the light. 

But that glint worried him. 

He knew who was coming. He knew what he would have to face. He knew what Hannibal would have to face.

He had been presented with this choice once before, all those years ago. Hannibal or someone else. The someone else was Jack once upon a time. Now it was Molly and Walter. The family he hid behind. It would be a lie to say he didn't care, he did. They were more than just his shield, the depth into which he sank as he clung to normality. He should want normal. He should want a life and a family and his dogs.

But what he wanted was Hannibal. 

He had seen the drop next to them. It was survivable. Whoever was behind the glint in the distance, the rapidly approaching glint, wouldn't let them live. Both he and Hannibal had their freedom taken and both were free again. And now Will felt freer than he ever had. He would need to get Hannibal medical attention, though it seemed that Hannibal's luck held. 

The other's hand tightened in his blood-soaked shirt. 

_Forgive me._ He thought as he pulled them over the cliff. 

He wasn't sure who hauled who out of the grips of the sea. But they found themselves on a beach, not far from where Will had taken them over. Hannibal's eyes filled with emotion and Will opened his mouth to explain when he heard a car in the distance. Then there were voices. He pressed his finger to his lips and then pointed to where they had come from. He had been right, the drop was survivable. He was lucky in several ways. Neither was as injured as they could be and it wasn't as cold outside as it could be. They would have bled out in the waves or froze in the cold. But neither happened. The salt stung the wounds on his face and shoulder, but it energized him more than it hurt him. Hannibal clutched his stomach as he turned toward where Will was facing, seeing the distinct sign of flashlights. 

It was going to hurt terribly, what he thought to do next. But it would be worth it. 

He shifted in the sand and grasped Hannibal's neck, leaving a new bloody handprint on his body, as he pulled him forward gently to not aggravate his wound. Their lips met in a chaste embrace and Will could taste blood and salt. 

It took their combined strength to haul them from the beach but he knew exactly where they should go next. Where Hannibal would take them next.

"Hello, Bedelia."

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come yell at me on [Tumblr](https://neurowriter14.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/NWriter14)


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